YORK: ‘Prove It’ can show we care

Hi, I’m Kenny York. As some of you know, I’ve been living as a homeless man, standing on street corners with a “Do You Care?” T-shirt and a “Prove It” sign since July 14. Some drivers, upon seeing me on a corner, have assumed I’m just some arrogant guy who’s come up with a new way to panhandle – but that’s not the case at all.

The reason I’ve taken to the streets is to become a face and a voice for the homeless, and to wake up our community to the fact that there’s a great need for action. There are hundreds of homeless Clarksvillians. Each one of them is someone’s son, daughter, brother, sister, father or mother – and many could become a vital part of our community if given a second chance to rebuild their lives.

Clarksville is the fifth fasting-growing city in the nation, so our homeless population is growing, too. We desperately need a round-the-clock transitional shelter – a place where those who are struggling can get off the street and start rebuilding their lives.

But for this to become a reality, I need your help. There are zoning issues that need to be addressed, but the bottom line is that the whole community needs to come together and prove we care enough to make the sacrifices necessary to take care of our own. Until we first meet the basic need of shelter, we can’t address people’s many other issues such as employment, life skills training, financial counseling, mental disabilities, addictions, and so on. A minister from Africa once told me that the hard part isn’t raising people from the dead – it’s curing them of what caused them to die in the first place.

My going homeless last week has helped some people understand that it’s time to take action. Many have responded by bringing me food and offering words of encouragement while I’ve been making my stand on those street corners, and that means more to me than you’ll ever know. But here’s the deal: Ultimately, it’s not about me or Manna Cafe – it’s about helping our neighbors.

It’s time to get rid of our stereotypes about the homeless (i.e., that they’re all lazy swindlers who deserve to be in a predicament). It’s time to spread the word that the vast majority are not panhandlers; rather, they’re people of all ages and both genders. A shocking percentage were once business professionals, college graduates, athletes, teachers, homeowners, even pastors.

Please hear me: If we go back to business as usual when I come off the streets, I will have failed. This needs to be far more than a 14-day event; it needs to be a movement – a shift in our mindset. The Prove It Movement is about showing our homeless Clarksvillians that they’re no longer invisible, and that we realize they’re valuable human beings.

What if, instead of pretending the homeless epidemic doesn’t exist, we prove we’re a community who cares? What if the Prove It Movement gains momentum until the rest of the nation looks to us as an example of compassion, until it is said of us that we take care of our poor and homeless because we’re committed to giving folks a second chance?

Do you care that there are hundreds of homeless individuals in our community? Do you care that an alarming number of them are children? Do you care that too many of our citizens sleep in broken-down cars, suffer from exposure to the elements, and have to sneak into laundromats to use a bathroom? If the answer is yes, then prove it! Here’s how:

• Go to petitions.moveon.org/sign/clarksville-city-council or mannacafeministries.com and sign the petition to support Manna Cafe’s efforts to open a shelter.

• Give monetarily via our website; we need hundreds of thousands of dollars to make this happen, so no gift is too big or too small.

• Get the word out about the Prove It Movement within your own circle of influence.

• Share my blog at proveitclarksville.com with your Facebook friends.

• Like us at http://www.facebook.com/mannacafe2010 to keep up with our efforts to open the shelter.